Media Tries to Make Newsweek Story All About White House ResponseCan you say, circle the wagons? Hugh Hewitt
discusses his on-air interview with Terry Moran.
But more than anything else, listeners and emailers reacted negatively to the arrogance that seeped from almost every answer Moran gave and to the press corps's hostility to the president and to the idea that the president's spokesman could legitimately call upon--not order, but urge--Newsweek to do more to reverse the damage done by their story.Lefty Joshua Micah Marshall says Bush is trying to turn the Newsweek affair into another Ra
thergate.
Here we have Scott McClellan, the president's press secretary, specifically demanding further disavowals of the story from Newsweek, even after errors were corrected. Indeed, as of yesterday morning, the White House continues to demand that Newsweek write one or more articles praising the U.S. military's treatment of terror-related detainees, as the price it must pay for getting out from under the debacle.
Those demands should trouble anyone. The White House is not a party at interest in this case. Perhaps the people who have been falsely accused are. Perhaps the Pentagon could demand an apology if the story turns out to be false. Or the Army. But not the White House. It is only involved here inasmuch as the story is bad for it politically.Well, according to some sources, even as Newsweek was officially disavowing the story, they were telling people around Washington that the story was good. And the lefty bloggers and the rest of the media have spent much of the week recirculating old stories about Korans in the crapper. So you can see why the administration might want Newsweek to be a little more emphatic in its renunciation of the story. But the press is taking this as an "us against them" situation.
John Hawkins
has more. I have a hunch that the media are going to make Newsweek's problems worse.
